"There are several countries in the world that operate their university systems on the basis of 'substantial fees' – chief among them the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand as well as ourselves. There is one piece of research conducted by the higher education strategy associates who have discovered, extraordinarily against our expectations, that high fees do not deter people from low incomes from going to university.

"The reverse is true of what one might have expected. 63% of the student population in Germany are children of fathers who also went to university. That means that only 37% of the students in Germany come from families where they are the first to go to university. That same figure is 51% in the UK. Only 29% of students in Australia had fathers who went to university, only 31% in Canada and 39% in the US.

"The countries in the world in which universities make the biggest contribution to social mobility are those with the highest fees. I agree it is counter-intuitive. But it is explainable because universities have an incentive to expand the number of places – because they receive additional money for every place – they massively expand the number of places. That makes it easier for people who have perhaps not had huge advantages in life, who have perhaps not been able to go to the best schools, who perhaps do not have the highest grades but are nevertheless huge potential reservoirs of talent. It enables them to offer places to those people."